A founder of Sri Lanka\u2019s Army of Buddhist Power tries to explain his militant views on Muslims, and how they fit with the government\u2019s triumphant story of post-war reconciliation.<\/i><\/p>\n
Sri Lanka\u2019s raffish capital, where we begin our series, is in economic catch-up mode. Colombo is replacing the colonial-era roads and railways built when Churchill was a boy and \u2018Ceylon\u2019 was a languid tropical afterthought for the British who ruled the plantation island.<\/i><\/p>\n
Though it took its time \u2013 10 years \u2013 to be completed, a sparkling new tollway to the beachy Rajapaksa heartland in the south has cut the journey from Colombo from a congested three-to-six hours to just one.<\/p>\n
In the conflict-ravaged Tamil north, Indian engineers are re-connecting the war-severed train line that once carried passengers from Colombo to Jaffna.<\/p>\n
In the mostly Sinhalese \u2018deep south\u2019 of the island,<\/a> President Mahinda Rajapaksa\u2019s home region of Hambantota is being lavished with the country\u2019s biggest infrastructural project, a US$1.5 billion stampede of white elephants that\u2019s giving the town a new port, international airport and cricket stadium \u2013 all named after President Rajapaksa \u2013 and a convention centre and even an alternative Bollywood complex.<\/a><\/p>\n Beijing is the main player behind all this construction, as it adds yet another stronghold to its string of pearls \u2013 China\u2019s network of strategic boltholes around the Indian Ocean intended to counter Western commercial influence in the region. Beijing financed<\/a> most of the Hambantota projects and shuttles Chinese workers in to build them; this in a region suffering crippling unemployment.<\/p>\n In Colombo, work has started on a Dubai-style \u2018Port City\u2019 \u2013 replete with de rigueur Formula One circuit \u2013 to be built on land Chinese companies are reclaiming from the sea. In November this year, all this will be flaunted in a diplomatic coup for the Rajapaksa regime \u2013 Colombo is hosting the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).<\/p>\n Colombo may still be one of Asia\u2019s poorest capitals, but its Rajapaksa-linked business community is re-arranging the skyline on borrowed money. It is studded with the new skyscrapers of hip hotels and soaring towers in various states of completion, which they hope will be filled by the ambitions of international tycoons. Australia\u2019s James Packer, for example, has teamed with a Rajapaksa crony to build a US$350 million casino complex<\/a> here.<\/p>\n But of the many towers now poking through Colombo\u2019s fast-fading colonial vista, few have gone up as fast or been f\u00eated with as much official attention as the Sri Sambuddhathva Jayanthi Mandiraya, a massive temple and office complex now soaring over the capital\u2019s leafy southern suburbs.<\/p>\n Opened in 2011, just two years after the war ended, the complex claims to be the world\u2019s biggest repository of Buddhist texts. Its modern foyer has the air of a busy library, criss-crossed by orange-hued tourists and locals in search of their inner Gautama. Less advertised, however, is that an adjacent wing is home to the headquarters of a shadowy ultra-Buddhist activist group called Bodu Bala Sena, which was formed in July 2012.<\/p>\n That translates as the \u201cArmy of Buddhist Power\u201d. Patronised by senior government officials, the BBS was born after militant fringes of the main religious party in Sri Lanka, the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU), or National Heritage Party, broke away because they felt the JHU was too moderate.<\/p>\n Since then, the BBS has emerged as the self-proclaimed true protector of Buddhism on the island, and many say it chooses to see anti-Buddhist demons where none exist. Sri Lanka may be at peace, with Sinhalese Buddhists in command and a pious and powerful practising Buddhist in the presidency, but to hear the BBS hierarchy tell it, Buddhism and Sri Lanka have never been more at risk.<\/p>\n Part vigilante group, part religious police, partly a Sri Lankan Tea Party, the BBS has been behind many of the attacks on Muslim practices and businesses here, and on Christian groups too, often encountering little police intervention<\/a>. BBS members make mostly unchallenged claims, on scant evidence, that Muslims dominate Sri Lanka\u2019s business community and foment religious fundamentalism, and that Muslim doctors secretly sterilise Sinhalese women. The group has also taken aim at Christians, warning churches against expanding their flocks by converting Buddhists.<\/p>\n Secularist Sri Lankans are alarmed. Social Integration Minister Vasudeva Nanayakkara has described the BBS as \u201cextremist\u201d. Prominent Sri Lankan diplomat Dayan Jayatilleka labels it as an \u201cethno-religious fascist movement from the dark underside of Sinhala society\u201d, while the island\u2019s most prominent Buddhist intellectual, the Venerable Professor Belanwila Wimalaratana Anunayake, has dissociated Sri Lanka\u2019s sangha, the mainstream Buddhist clergy, from BBS extremism.<\/p>\n Tamil leaders are also concerned. \u201cI think this is a game that they are playing,\u201d says Kumaravadivel Guruparan, law lecturer at Jaffna University and civil-society activist in the war-ravaged north-east. \u201cWe thought you can\u2019t get more Sinhala Buddhist-extremist than this government,\u201d but then groups like the BBS suddenly emerged on the government side \u2013 \u201cso now they [the Rajapaksa regime] start looking like a moderate\u201d.<\/p>\n The post-war rise of militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka, which mirrors similar activism in reformist Burma and elsewhere in South-East Asia, has particularly sinister overtones here.<\/p>\n One of Sri Lanka\u2019s most controversial post-colonial dynastic leaders, Solomon Bandaranaike, was assassinated in 1959 by a Buddhist monk who felt betrayed that Bandaranaike\u2019s pro-Sinhalese policies \u2013 which many Sri Lankans believe sparked the separatist Tamil uprising in the north-east \u2013 didn\u2019t go far enough to advantage the Sinhala-speaking majority. (There is another view that the assassin, who converted to Christianity before his execution, was hired by a senior monk avenging the loss of business opportunities.)<\/p>\n The BBS\u2019s layman chief executive and program co-ordinator of its Buddhist Leadership Academy, Dilanthe Withanage, met The Global Mail<\/i> at the group\u2019s nerve centre, a bland suite of offices that wouldn\u2019t be out of place in the new corporate Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n A nuggety man in his 40s, Withanage wears civilian garb, in contrast to the orange-robed monks drifting through the office. He speaks English and Russian \u2013 by virtue of his Soviet-era-sponsored education in Georgia.<\/p>\n According to Withanage, the BBS came into being because \u201cwe felt that Buddhism is not protected in this country and Buddhists face a big danger locally as well as internationally\u201d. This despite the fact that as many as 75 per cent of Sri Lankans identify themselves as Buddhist Sinhalese.<\/p>\n Many Sri Lankans believe that the BBS is a creation of the government, in particular of President Rajapaksa\u2019s brother Gotabaya, Sri Lanka\u2019s unelected Defence Secretary, a former soldier and the mastermind of the 2009 victory over the mostly Hindu Tamil rebels. Gotabaya has denied any involvement<\/a> in the emergence of the BBS.<\/p>\n The BBS seems to be a Lankan re-run of India\u2019s ethnocentric Mumbai-based Shiv Sena movement; and of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the National Patriotic Organisation of Hindu extremists, which shadows India\u2019s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.<\/p>\n Withanage rejects such comparisons. \u201cWe don\u2019t have any political influence,\u201d he claims.<\/p>\n But if the president\u2019s powerful brother is not an architect of the BBS, Gotabaya Rajapaksa seems at the very least to be a patron of the organisation. In March, he officiated at the opening of a BBS outpost in the southern port city of Galle, which has a big Muslim community centred on its ancient fort.<\/p>\n \u201cGotabaya came to open something donated by a German fellow to the Buddhist Cultural Centre. We\u2019ve decided to use this facility as a training centre,\u201d says Withanage.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not quite how the \u201cGerman fellow\u201d, a Buddhist called Michael Kreitmeir, sees it. He told The Global Mail<\/i> his \u2018Meth Sevena\u2019 retreat outside Galle, set up in 2007 as part of his interfaith charity, Little Smile,<\/a> had recently become embroiled in an ownership dispute. He said he had approached the Buddhist Cultural Centre in Colombo for co-operation, but was \u201cmost surprised\u201d to discover it had \u201csome connection\u201d with the BBS, and that Gotabaya Rajapaksa then showed up to open his project. \u201cMeth Sevana is not and will never be a centre of Bodu Bala Sena,\u201d Kreitmeir says.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, when Milinda Moragoda, an erstwhile presidential advisor and leading figure in Colombo\u2019s civil society lobby, brokered a cross-religious community deal<\/a> over cattle slaughter and the halal certification of food products, Buddhist and Muslim leaders linked hands in a public display of unity.<\/p>\n But the Moragoda deal fell short of the blanket ban on halal labelling demanded by the BBS. Outraged, the BBS then accused Moragoda of creating \u201can unholy inter-religious alliance, and attempting to destroy our learned monks [who were] now in the grasp of infidels\u201d. These monks, the BBS lamented, \u201cwere pseudo Buddhist leaders who never stood against Muslim extremism and Christian fundamentalism\u201d.<\/p>\n For his part, Morogoda told The Global Mail,<\/i> \u201cas a practising Buddhist \u2026 in my view, true Buddhism is all about the Middle Path, moderation and tolerance. That is the Buddhism that I follow. Extremism is antithetical to the teachings of the Lord Buddha who preached moderation and tolerance. There is no need for self-proclaimed protectors of the doctrine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cRELIGION is a private thing,\u201d Withanage tells The Global Mail.<\/i> And many conflict-weary Lankans would agree.<\/p>\n But in recent months Withanage\u2019s group has chosen to make some very public religious protests.<\/p>\n In January, the BBS hierarchy got hold of an event-planning document for a dinner that was to be hosted at a resort hotel south of Colombo. The hotel is much favoured by French tourists and owned by Sri Lanka\u2019s biggest company, John Keells Holdings.<\/p>\n Keells is a sprawling enterprise, straddling interests in IT, banks, plantations, hotels and retail, and is as yet outside the expanding corporate grasp of the ruling Rajapaksa clan. Businessman Susantha Ratnayake is chairman of Keells, and also chairs the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC), which had helped to broker the inter-faith halal deal with Moragoda and the various religious lobbies. Ratnayake and the CCC have since been in the BBS\u2019s crosshairs, because the BBS claims they \u201cfail to safeguard\u201d Buddhist business interests on the island.<\/p>\n The Keells document that fell into BBS hands discussed the theme the hotel staff had planned for the dinner; it described the meal as \u201cnirvana\u201d with a \u201ccosy Buddha Bar lounge\u201d feel. Intended for French holidaymakers, this function seemed intended to evoke the Parisian music and food phenomenon<\/a> fashionably fused by French-Tunisian DJ Claude Challe, which became the chill-out soundtrack of the 2000s for hipsters from Bali to Budapest.<\/p>\n But the BBS response was anything but chilled. An orange army of militant monks led by the group\u2019s secretary-general, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, stormed the hotel and succeeded in having hotel management carted off by the police on a charge of \u201churting religious feelings\u201d.<\/p>\n The BBS moved on the hotel, Withanage told The Global Mail,<\/i> \u201cbecause of the alcohol, the dancing, the behaviour\u201d.<\/p>\n When asked whether the BBS is against people having a good time, Withanage railed: \u201cWhy do they use the menu \u2018Nirvana\u2019? The name Buddha should be used appropriately. We should respect any religion. The context is different, it\u2019s not appropriate to use in a hotel, in the evening party.\u201d He adds that calling a drinks venue \u201cthe Jesus Bar\u201d might similarly be deemed hurtful by Christians.<\/p>\n Although a self-appointed guardian of public morals, the BBS is oddly unfussed by the plethora of casinos in Sri Lanka. Many of these are owned by business associates of the Rajapaksa clan, including the government-approved $US350 million development planned by local tycoon Ravi Wijeratne and Australian James Packer on a prime downtown Colombo site, which happens to be adjacent to Colombo\u2019s oldest Hindu temple.<\/p>\n \u201cLord Buddha is not against anything,\u201d says the BBS executive Withanage, when asked about this apparent moral inconsistency. \u201cHe never asked kings to stop things.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIn Sri Lanka, there are a couple of casinos. No-one protested about them,\u201d he says. \u201cBut when this Australian guy wanted to start, they all talk about casinos. What we [the BBS] said was if we attack that person, we should attack the other parties also.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we want to stop casinos, it\u2019s everybody,\u201d Withanage says. \u201cWe should not attack only one casino because that turns us into being against investment. If you\u2019re against casinos you should be against all casinos in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPersonally, I think it is better that we don\u2019t have gambling but we [BBS] don\u2019t have any problem with it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The BBS would, however, like Buddhism to be Sri Lanka\u2019s official state religion. The current constitution, passed in 1978, holds that Sri Lanka is a secular state guaranteeing its citizens freedom of religion, with Buddhism holding the \u201cforemost place\u201d. There is no mention of Hinduism, Islam or Christianity in the document.<\/p>\n The BBS claims Buddhism was the island\u2019s state religion before the British colonised \u2018Ceylon\u2019 in 1815 after deposing its Kandyan aristocracy. \u201cWe think whatever we had before the British should come back,\u201d says Withanage.<\/p>\n Hinduism has been practised by large numbers on the island for millennia, and today as many as 15 per cent of the island \u2013 Sri Lanka\u2019s Tamil communities \u2013 lay claim to being Hindu. Its presence on the island is even mentioned in the epic Hindu poem, the Ramayana, which dates from around the 4th century BC. Hinduism was also the state religion of the Jaffna Kingdom in the north of the island that fell to Portuguese invaders in 1624.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t seem to factor in the BBS\u2019s version of history. Withanage rules out Hinduism as a co-state religion in Sri Lanka, and any official recognition for Islam and Christianity too. \u201cBefore the British came into this country, Buddhism was the state religion so therefore Buddhism should be the state religion \u2026 provided all other religions have due respect and freedom to practice.\u201d<\/p>\n A tall 40-something man in a luxuriant vermillion robe and furiously tapping at an iPad joins us. He exudes authority, and Withanage stops mid-sentence to genuflect to the newcomer. I recognise him as Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara, secretary-general of the BBS and one of the group\u2019s founders.<\/p>\n Withanage introduces him and they continue railing about the real or imagined threats to Sri Lankan Buddhism. I ask them why they see their faith as under threat on an island where ethnic Sinhalese Buddhists comprise around 75 per cent of the country\u2019s 20 million people \u2013 leaving Sri Lanka\u2019s other ethnic and religious groups clearly in the minority \u2013 and given that the president is a very publicly devout Buddhist and a vocal champion of the faith.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just Sri Lankan Buddhism that the BBS is campaigning for, Gnanasara explains, but for others in the Buddhist world too. He cites the recent banning from circulation of an issue of Time<\/i> magazine in Sri Lanka, because it described the outbreak of Buddhist militancy in nearby Burma as \u2018The Face of Buddhist Terror\u2019.<\/a><\/p>\n